Balance
by artemis69
Summary: Derek is eight, and he can control the change, his glowing eyes, his sharp claws and fangs. He learned with his dad how to move without noises and from Grandma how to kill without making the animals suffer. Derek is eight and a predator in training. Derek is eight, hidden behind a pitiful bush, knees digging in the mud. Hunting was more glorious in his imagination.


**Note** : I posted my english stuff on my Tumblr/AO3 account, and completely forgot to post it here. So sorry! So this is my first OS from teen wolf, Sterek of course. This is really short, but I hope you will enjoy it!

 **Note bis (pour les francophones purs):** Contrairement à ce qu'il pourrait sembler, "une odeur d'étoile" n'est pas abandonnée mais bien en cours. Je subis un léger blocage, et j'ai donc plusieurs OS drarry/sterek en cours mais j'avance peu. Ceci dit je persévère. Chacun de vos petits mots a été lu et chéri, et je vous remercie mille fois pour votre soutien!

 **Balance**

"Balance" Talia says.

In the clearing in front of them, the doe is feeding peacefully. The sun is low in the sky, the air crisp and metallic with the remnants of winter. The grass is still burnt by the cold and the doe fluffy with fur. The fawn between her legs is scrawny and frail, born too early in the year.

Derek is eight, and he can control the change, his glowing eyes, his sharp claws and fangs. He learned with his dad how to move without noises, with Peter how to move with the wind, and from Grandma how to kill without making the animals suffer.

Derek is eight and a predator in training.

Derek is eight, hidden behind a pitiful bush, knees digging in the mud.

Hunting was more glorious in his imagination.

Laura brought back her first big prey last autumn and now, Derek is going to do the same. He is not a _baby_ anymore. He has a plan, and it involves the doe on his shoulder and Laura seething in jealousy.

"Balance" Talia says again, and Derek looks up to her.

She is not hidden, nor is she wolfed out. Derek wants to shush her, to tell her to get down before she frightens the prey.

He doesn't, of course.

Talia Hale is more silent than her husband when she needs to be, sneakier than her little brother and as deadly as her mother. She stands proud and fierce in her human skin, with the poised smile of someone whose blood is power.

Even on two legs, Talia Hale is more wolf than any of them on four paws.

She is Derek's alpha and, worse, his mom. So when she talks, he listens and learns.

"The universe is all about balance Derek. If you take more than you can eat, hurt more than you should, you disturb this frail equilibrium"

She crouches near him, let her hand pass tenderly in his hair. Her eyes don't leave the doe and its young, watching the fawn jump and play in the sparse grass.

"Only claim what you need sweetheart, no more. When you start to take what isn't yours, the universe will take right back"

Derek is fifteen, lying in the dirt, and in the wind, ashes are a never-ending ballet of silver snowflakes.

Somewhere Laura is yelling, fighting the hands trying to keep her away. Her human voice seems broken, oscillating between sobs and howls.

Derek is fifteen, and listens to the silence between the sirens and the screams.

He remembers Peter laugh, dry and always so fond. His grandparents running in the forest, slowed by age and playing like puppies between the trees. The betas of the pack, fighting and growling when trying to help him with his homework. Cora, so small and smelling like everything good in the world. His father and his big hands, his calm acceptance of the world and his never-ending love for everything living.

His mom, so, so beautiful in the sunlight of the late winter, telling him about balance and never taking more than he should.

He watches the moon, a blurry ghost through the smoke.

He thinks of his pack, the love and support and laughs that were given to him all his life.

He thinks of the last months, and orders that made his teenage skin crawl in indignation. Advices and worries that made him snap and run away for hours, angry at the world.

Spitting his fury on a white pillow, his hatred of this tidy life, narrow and stifling. Dreaming out loud about getting rid of everything, leaving comfort and expectations behind for the unknown.

He recalls a background of laughs like ripe fruits, like sex. A smile like a knife, human hands like claws on his back. Blond hair in his nose, smelling like sunshine and lavender. A sweet voice in his ears with promises of freedom. With pledges of forever.

The fire devours the night and the Hale house whines and bends, decades of history and love turning to ashes.

The breeze smells of death, burnt wolfsbane and lavender.

Derek is fifteen and drowns in the emptiness where heartbeats used to be.

Derek is eighteen and New York is noises without end, a sky too grey and low and his skin becoming tighter each day.

New york is guilt, working on a history major to please Laura. Taking jobs at night to avoid the nightmares.

Derek is eighteen and devastated by Laura frowning in her sleep. She is an alpha without a pack or a territory. With a brother too afraid to confess that he wanted too much, and the world took everything in return.

Derek is eighteen and gives and gives and gives.

Money to homeless people, bread to one-legged pigeons, hot-dogs to stray cats. He gets balloons from trees, carries shopping bags. He saves all his tips and purchases small gifts for Laura as often as he can. Concert tickets, birds made of glass, necklace of a wolf footprint.

Young, Laura had always been so serious, but with a booming laugh, free and ridiculous. Precious like a gem among stones.

Now, she smiles sometimes.

At eighteen, Derek is too afraid to be greedy for more

Derek is twenty-three, and half of Laura is in the ground.

On the whiteness of her skin, the wolfsbane is obscene and awful, beautiful purple keeping the wolf at bay forever. Derek's hands are burnt and there is dirt everywhere.

Derek is twenty-three and wonders what was the cause for the punishment this time.

Stiles is sixteen, young and smart and annoying. He pushes and pushes, always afraid and never backing down or submitting.

His eyes are those of a wolf and he is so, so beautiful.

Derek is twenty-four, a predator at heart and he looks at the doe eyes and the moles and the pale skin and wants to pounce.

But Derek is twenty-four and remembers a warm and graceful smile that burnt to the ground. Remembers a smirk like passion and flames that took everything away. Remembers a jewel-laugh that never came back.

And Stiles is sixteen, and in love with another.

Lydia is grace and passion and power, and Derek can understand the adoration even if he resents it.

So Derek keeps his distances. They fight and he lets him see the burnt shell, angry and bitter. He hides the not-so-old Derek. The one that hears about pizza night, stupid movies and the word 'pack' and craves.

He stands on the side, forgotten and creepy and only useful when something try to kill them. He revels in the laughs surrounding him, the friendly banter and teenage crisis.

He listens to Stiles babble fun facts about squids, lacrosse and his father diet. He catches the grace infiltrating the clumsiness, the confidence unfolding his spine and the hurt dancing hidden in the sarcasm.

None of that is directed to him, but he makes himself stop caring.

Because Derek is twenty-four, and learned not to take what isn't his to take.

Derek is twenty-five, and lying in the mud. The night is cool and crisp, end of autumn slowly sliding into winter.

Derek is twenty-five, and his blood is all over the clearing, glistening under the moon like liquid mercury. His lungs don't work properly, sounding like pierced balloons. Half of his body is screaming in agony. The other half, he can't feel it anymore.

Derek is twenty-five, and dying.

But there are more important things. Like the sound of a beloved heartbeat, erratic as a frighten bunny and the satisfying silence of the monster conjured by the sorceress. Stiles is safe, and Derek wants to stop fighting now.

A trembling hand appears against his cheekbone and suddenly death can wait just a handful of minutes.

Stiles' free hand presses hard on different places of his body, frantic, trying to find where to stop the haemorrhage first. In his face, his eyes are huge and gold, angry and terrified. There are drops of blood on his arms and his face, hundreds of new moles made of Derek on his skin.

His voice is all edges, the words not really making sense. Derek tries to concentrate really hard, because Stiles words are always important to him.

He fails, his attention going back to the pain and the desolation in his body, the billions of cells dying and multiplying in a dizzying battle. He smiles.

"Balance"

His own voice seems far away and not really belonging to him anymore. Stiles fingers from both hands come cradling his face, hard and hot against his skin.

"Balance what buddy?"

There is a harsh, hysterical sharpness to Stiles' voice and Derek would like to just pet him, shush him. Make the worry stop. He takes a couple of seconds to remember how to make words, and try to explain.

"My mom. Says… Said life is balance" He coughs, pants. "Take too much, and lose too much"

He wants to explain how he had everything and kept asking for more, how he put aside love and family and loyalty. How he lied for lust and a fake liberty. How he lost them all, and how he keeps paying the price. But this needs way too many words, and he just says

"Would've been pissed. Didn't listen"

Stiles let a laugh like a bark escape.

"When do you ever?"

His voice is warm and Derek tries to smile, but his mouth is full of blood and he is not sure it will be that reassuring. Stiles fingers start caressing his face, slowly, tenderly.

"But I like the idea. Following her logic, after everything that was taken from you, you earned the right to ask for anything for the rest of your life without ever worrying about the bill anymore"

He looks at Derek with his wolf-eyes and his Derek-moles, his smile fond and fierce and precious.

Derek closes his eyes with a sigh.

Derek is twenty-five, bleeding out in the mud, and Stiles' hands never leave his skin.

The summer is at its peak and in the forest the air smells of flowers spoiled by too much warmth and of baked dirt. In the clearing, the grass is yellowing under the sun. The doe fur is slick, shining, and her fawn has the grotesque appearance of young animals growing up, its rear almost higher than its head.

Thirty years later, the bush is bigger, with thousands of green leaf and poisonous berries. Kneeling in the mud, several little persons are debating in whispers. Derek looks at the mix of human smiles, foxes ears, coyote fangs and wolf claws.

"Are we going to kill them?"

"They are really cute"

"Don't be a baby. It's food!"

"You don't even like deer"

With Allison, Lydia and Erica, they learned how to hunt in silence and use their brains. That they were the only one allowed to determine their own value and that appearances were weapons amongst many others.

Boyd and Jackson taught them how to stay calm and still or how to make their voices heard when needed.

Melissa and the Sheriff made them absorb the concept that hurting is never good, even if the wound is not visible. Even is the wound doesn't stay on your skin more than a second.

Scott taught them how to love every soul and that differences were to be enjoyed.

Stiles showed them that heroes don't need powers, and that you can fall as many times as you want as long as you keep getting up.

And he tried to convince them that curly fries and milkshakes are way better than any cute woodland animal. Except for the sheriff.

At thirty-eight, Derek doesn't give them lessons.

He is the one going to school reunion to scare bullies away. He listens to broken hearts, keep sticky hands away from the new couch and tries to resolve conflict in the baby pack.

He repeats over and over the fairy tales from his family, the oldest enjoying the ritual and the youngest the novelty. He tells stories of the moon falling in love with a wolf, and watch Scott tears up without failing. He describes goddesses running on four paws, giving them attributes from women of the pack and watches them preens. The fey sleeping in the giant wolf fur is, weirdly, Jackson favourite and he seats down each time to hear it. He tells with reverence the old polish stories from Stiles childhood, to make the Stilinski smile their Claudia's smile, soft and sweet. And then he makes up more, new ones just for their pack. With foxes, coyote and wolves playing with human and banshee.

At thirty-eight, Derek knows that the worst and only way to really learn is by living, and he is only there to help each of the little ones along the way.

"Shhh, now everybody listen to Derek. It's important"

Stiles is crouched in the mud, way too tall to really fit behind the bush. He looks as excited as the children, looking at the fawn with wonder. The eyes of the kids are all fixated on Derek, but he waits patiently for Stiles to come back to him.

At thirty-eight, Derek now knows that Stiles will always come back to him.

When he does, it's with an enthusiastic smile making his sun-freckled nose wrinkle. There is a mark, dark and high on his neck, that made Scott sigh and Erica cackle like a hyena. His fingers pet tenderly Scott youngest kid's hair, tired by the long march and drowsing against his knee.

Derek looks at them, happy and safe and warm and he makes himself big and solemn. A wolf in human skin. He smiles.

"Balance"

 _The end_

 **Note:** Thank you so much for reading! I hope it wasn't too excruciating!


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